Dpreview's review of the Olympus XZ-1 is up. Seems the bright lens really is as good as the specs suggest, and I'm rather impressed by the image quality, giving the S95 a run for its money (and personally I prefer the slight extra detail they seemed to get out of it, and not mind the extra noise).

It's never going to give you the sort of images Valli's after, but as a S95/LX5 competitor it is pretty evenly matched. Actually the LS5 seemed to make a bit of a meal of their studio test compared to the XZ-1 and S95 which surprised me.

It doesn't allow you to configure the round lens control for zoom, it doesn't go out to 24mm (only 28) and dpreview were bothered by the lack of AE lock, but if none of those are deal-breakers for you, it's definitely worth considering and I'd say it beats the S95/LX5. It does seem to be a bit more expensive at present, but maybe it'll settle down after a little time on the market.

Apparently. I gather half-pressing the shutter will lock AF and AE as per usual, but there's no way to get AE from one spot but focus on another. It's not a very configurable camera apparently, and there's no button provided for AE lock.

To be honest though, I can't remember the last time I needed it on my D70. Switching to matrix metering generally helps ensure nothing's too badly blown out, and there's enough latitude in the images to pull out details if I don't get it right first time. The only time recently I've completely ballsed up exposure was last time it was snowy out and the contrast was so great I don't think there was any point I could have got AE off. I more often fiddle with exposure compensation and reshoot.

Yeah. I'm never sure if that'll translate to the same DoF as it would on a APS-C or 35mm sensor, what with the XZ-1 having the same sized sensor as its peers though. A few of the shots on dpreview's gallery seem to have reasonable DoF effects, but they're all listed with their real focal length, not 35mm equivalent, so I've no real idea how any of the shots were taken.

The lens does seem very sharp though, and I didn't spot much in the way of corner softness. That lens is definitely the star of the show.

I think the tip with any compact is to avoid using the zoom unless you really have to. S90 lens is pretty slow when zoomed in and the ISO shoots right up so I try and avoid ever using it, which I guess I'm used to now as I only have primes on my SLR.

Well, sensor size is another DOF deciding factor but 2.5 at that end would be very shallow on a APS-C.

Wow, the corner sharpness is insane, it even beats kit lenses from Nikon and Canon. Highlight the upper left corner here and choose D7000 and EOS 60D. Too bad noise takes over entirely at 800 already although it performs much better than the LX-5 and the S95. Quite impressive little bastard this one... how much was it again?

PS: I've always had a weakness for Olympus, loved their big SLR like super zooms back in the early 2000s and ofc. the classic Zuiko series lenses.

valli wrote:
Wow, the corner sharpness is insane, it even beats kit lenses from Nikon and Canon. Highlight the upper left corner here and choose D7000 and EOS 60D. Too bad noise takes over entirely at 800 already although it performs much better than the LX-5 and the S95. Quite impressive little bastard this one... how much was it again?

The S95 and LX5 seem to do about as well as the XZ1 in that test - the Sammy EX1 looks bad enough to be a duff sample though. Look at the watch in the bottom right corner versus the LX5 and S95 though - the XZ1 looks to be better than DSLR kit lens quality.

Actually if you do that watch test against the D7000 and 60D as you suggest, it looks like it really is that good. And look at the detail in the feathers to the left of that! Amazing.

It's $500/€450/£400 retail, and Warehouse Express are currently asking exactly that, but it's in pretty short supply still, so I'd expect that to start dropping soon.

@nth That's the nice thing about this lens. It's still around about f2.2 at 100mm (f2.5 at the limit of 112mm) which is well under a stop I think, although I'm terrible at working out f numbers in my head. Even f2.5 is only about a stop and a quarter I think. Unless you're already pushing shutter speed and ISO you should get a decent shot out of it in most light. It looks to be a very versatile camera!

Yea, dismissed it as a boring P&S camera I guess. Found Ken Rockwell reviewing it (who else eh?) and the corner sharpness of that lens beats a Canon L zoom with ease.

Amazing what lenses they could make back then. Sure, you could easily ruin image quality in extreme conditions (see flare for instance) but if you knew what you were doing and shot on low ISO film, you could easily beat a modern 2kUSD+ DSLR.

Absolutely. Good lenses require good glass and precision grinding. We've been making glass since ancient Egyptian times, although we didn't use it for lenses until mediaevel times apparently so by the 20th century it was about as good as it was going to get. And grinding? Telescopes have always needed better optics that you need for photography. The twentieth century just gave us mass production which helped make them affordable for people on the 9-5 treadmill. By the 1960's they were about as good as they were going to get. After that they had to start inventing reasons for us to but new kit - interchangeable lenses, automatic aperture, zoom, autofocus. Each time they convinced us to replace our good old kit with cheaper new kit for more money, so that they were then able to sell us kit as good as our old kit for even more. Now they're reduced to coating the lenses funny colours, and having almost exhausted that, fiddling around with the rest of the camera - the viewfinder, the sensor etc.

That said, modern sensors are amazing. They easily beat the old rolls of shitty 35mm film you got free with the cost of development we used to use. Plus you take development out of the equation which make things a lot more predictable. I don't know how they compare with the best paper out there, but the fact that even cheap slrs can produce images with no discernable grain given enough light is incredible.

Speaking of awesome compact rangefinders, I've fingered (that must be the correct term) on a Contax G2, amazing piece of hardware. According to the pros, the Planar 50mm/1.4 Zeiss did for Contax is one of the sharpest lenses ever created.

I hope you're wrong. If they introduce a new mount and if they go for the pro market (ie future proof), anything smaller than APS-C would be suicide.

For once, they can't fool around and need to make the sensor as big as intended for this mount. I mean, they could introduce an amateur model with a smaller sensor at a later date (and introduce the crop penalty as well) but they can't go the other way around, can they?

If anyone knows anything about future proof mounts, it's Nikon with their F mount. Also, people are already complaining about the m4/3 sensor being too small and Sony has shown the competitors how to introduce a new digital lens mount. Too bad they don't seem to have the muscle to support it with lenses. What does NEX have, 2 zooms and a prime plus some Carl Zeiss non-working prototypes that get shuffled around the globe at different expos?

valli wrote:
Speaking of awesome compact rangefinders, I've fingered (that must be the correct term) on a Contax G2, amazing piece of hardware. According to the pros, the Planar 50mm/1.4 Zeiss did for Contax is one of the sharpest lenses ever created.